Prince Adam Czartoryski as a liminal figure in the development of modern nationalism in Eastern Europe at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract

In Polish history, Prince Adam Czartoryski is almost universally regarded as one of the most important Polish statesmen and patriots of the first half of the nineteenth century. In Russian history, on the other hand, he is remembered chiefly as the Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire, and a close personal friend of Tsar Alexander I. How did Czartoryski reconcile his commitment to the Polish nation with his service to the Russian Empire (a state which occupied most of Poland)? This paper will attempt to place Prince Adam's friendship with Alexander, and his service to Imperial Russia, in the broader context of national identity formation in early nineteenth-century eastern Europe. It will be argued that the idea of finding a workable relationship between Poland and Russia, even within the framework of a single state for a “Slavic nation,” was an important and forgotten feature of Polish political thought at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By answering the question of precisely how Czartoryski was able to negotiate between the identities of a “Polish patriot” and “Russian statesman,” the paper will shed light on the broader development of national identity in early nineteenth-century Poland and Russia.

Keywords:

• nationalism
• Poland
• Russia
• Adam Czartoryski

Notes

For the most important biographies of Czartoryski see Dziewanowski; Jerzy Skowronek, Adam Jerzy Czartoryski 1770–1861; Marian Kukiel, Książę Adam; Marceli Handelsman, Adam Czartoryski. Zawadzki's excellent book is a biographical work which discusses Czartoryski's early years, and was most useful in analyzing his “Russian connection.” Kukiel, Czartoryski and European Unity addresses some of the paradoxes behind Czartoryski's apparent contradictory loyalties to both Poland and the Russian Empire. However, writing in the 1950s, Kukiel was not able to make use of the sophisticated theoretical literature on nationalism, which was developed in the 1980s. As a result, his work takes for granted the existence of almost thoroughly modern Polish and Russian national identities at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and, thus, in my opinion misses a fundamental dimension of the problem under consideration. Most recent monographs on Czartoryski focus on specific aspects of his political agenda and activity. Some representative titles include: Pezda, Ludzie i pieniądze; Żurawski, Działalność Księcia Adama Jerzego Czartoryskiego w Wielkiej Brytanii (1831–1832; Żurek, Czarnogórcy i Serbowie w Rosyjskiej polityce Księcia Adama Jerzego Czartoryskiego; Żurek, Akcja Hotelu Lambert na rzecz obalenia Bana Chorwacji Josipa Jelačicia. However, these works are written within the paradigm of traditional political history and do not offer a sustained theoretical discussion of Czartoryski's national-political identity and its impact on his political loyalties. The constructivist approach to nationalism, which informs this article, is perhaps best exemplified by Anderson, Hobsbawm, and Gellner. Unfortunately, this approach, which is standard in contemporary Western scholarship, has been seldom applied to the study of Polish history. For some fruitful exceptions to this see Snyder, Porter, or Walicki.

The Polish state was usually called Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów, which is literally translated as the Republic of the Two Nations (the Polish and the Lithuanian). However, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is the term generally used in English. Nonetheless, it is term “Republic” rather than “Commonwealth” which gives a more accurate image of the state's ethos.

For a more thorough treatment see Mączak.

For a detailed account of the Czartoryski clan's role in this struggle see Zielińska.

In other words, they drew a link between the new “republican” ideas emanating out of France, and the old “republican” past of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Incidentally, they were not alone in this. Jean Jacques Rousseau died before he could see the flowering of the Polish Enlightenment but he certainly recognized the kinship between some of his own ideas and the less clearly articulated sentiments driving the reactionary Confederation of Bar in the 1760s. See Rousseau.

As this paper will show, by “republican” Czartoryski meant both the modern republicanism of the early French revolution and its theorists, and the Polish tradition of the noble republic. The virtual conflation of nationalism or patriotism and republicanism (like many other Poles, Czartoryski would later oppose the concept of “Polish republicanism” to “Russian autocracy”) illustrates that, for him, the national idea and representative government were part of the same conceptual package, which could be defended on the grounds of both Enlightenment rationalism and the tradition of Polish statehood.

It is true that some Poles, like the Bar Confederates, opposed the King, but this was because they viewed him as a traitor, and a threat to the laws and freedoms he was supposed to safeguard. Representatives of the Polish Enlightenment, on the other hand, tried to strengthen royal power and limit the scope of “noble democracy.” This drive found its expression in the Constitution of May 3.

Anderson who places the “invention” of nationalism the New World rather than Europe, nevertheless agrees with its modular nature (113). The distinction between civic and ethnic types of nationalism (or between patriotism and nationalism) has been justly criticized in recent scholarship because it contains an inherent normative bias. Patriotism or civic nationalism is implicitly characterized as progressive, liberal, and “Western,” whereas ethnic nationalism is seen as xenophobic, backward and “Eastern.” In his later work, Brubaker himself seems to have reconsidered his earlier endorsement of the civic/ethnic typology, and instead opted for the “more modest” distinction between “state-framed” and “counter-state” nationalisms (Ethnicity without Groups 144). In this paper, however, I will make use of the terms “civic” and “ethnic,” in the sense in which they are used by Zubrzycki, who persuasively argues that the civic/ethnic distinction can be useful if we treat these concepts as ideal types (in the Weberian sense) or analytical categories, rather than as representations of an empirical reality (“The Classical Opposition between Civic and Ethnic Models of Nationhood”).

Of course the idea of a French “model” being applied to Poland is problematic, since the developments in the two states were taking place almost exactly at the same time.

For a slightly more optimistic reading of the Bard Polski see Kufel.

In the eighteenth century, the term nation had two meanings which were used side by side. Its first meaning referred to the noble nation (naród szlachecki), which comprised the (noble) citizens of the Rzeczpospolita. The second meaning was roughly analogous to the manner in which the word is used colloquially today and basically meant either an ethnic group or the citizens of a particular stare (Pepłowski 105).

Although there can be no doubt that the latter also played an important role for most Polish patriots, and especially “radicals” like Tadeusz Kościuszko.

Although, of course, there were Poles, such as the Confederates of Bar, who opposed King Stanisław Poniatowski on strategic or tactical grounds. However, their goal was to change the king's policies or replace the particular king, and not to overturn and destroy the monarchy as an institution.

The Czartoryski estates were scattered throughout the vast and multiethnic Republic. Depending on the specific area, peasants could have spoken Polish, Ruthenian (modern Ukrainian and Belarusian), or Lithuanian. However, even the “ethically” Polish” peasants spoke a wide variety of dialects, not all of which would have been easily intelligible to an aristocrat like Czartoryski, who spoke the literary version of the language.

In fact, Catherine gave the estates to Prince Adam and his brother, who later had to transfer them to their parents. Czartoryski, Pamiętniki 115–17.

Following the French Revolution, he actually changed his name from de la Harpe, to the less aristocratic Leharpe.

Later in life Alexander would, of course, adopt a more conservative position and embrace the conception of “his” empire.

Of course, many Polish writers were highly critical of the Russian government, individual Russians, or even Russian society, but this criticism was generally expressed in political rather than ethnic terms.

Russification in the Polish and Lithuanian provinces of the Russian Empire was introduced after the failed uprisings of 1831 and, to an even greater extent, 1863.

The only ethnic Russian was A.K. Razumovski. However, according to Grimsted, even he had spent so many years in Vienna that he was “unable to write a dispatch in Russian” and was “cosmopolitan in every sense of the term” (The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I 15).

Czartoryski (Pamiętniki i memoriały polityczne 504).

It is interesting that Kukiel, who offers an analysis of the memorandum's Pan-Slavic dimension, readily notes its implications for Russia's Balkan policy but ignores the implications of the fact that the Poles were also included in the “Slavic Race” (Czartoryski and European unity, 1770–1861 35–36).

Czartoryski (Pamiętniki i memoriały polityczne, 1776–1809 536).

For example, in his extensive discussion of Czartoryski's Russian connection, Skowronek doesn't mention his idea of a “Slavic race” Skowronek, (Adam Jerzy Czartoryski 1770–1861 73–83). As noted earlier, Kukiel, who does discuss it, fails to mention its implications for the Poles (Czartoryski and European unity, 1770–1861 35–36).

He did attempt to resign his service to the Emperor, but Alexander refused to let him go.

Alexander wanted to recreate Poland out of the territories annexed by Austria, Prussia, and most of those annexed by the Russian Empire, and attach it Russia through a dynastic or personal union. Paradoxically, at this point it was the English (as well as the Prussian and Austrians) who opposed this, because they thought it would give Russia too much power and destabilize Europe. The creation of the truncated Polish “Congress Kingdom” as this entity was popularly called, took place largely thanks to the Russians, and not the Western powers.

Ukraine and the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania.